The victim said: “He threatened me with my finger and said, do not do that again.”

The court heard how he woke up the next morning to a knife above his head. Before he had chance to react, he was stabbed in the neck, while the attacker screamed “You are a pig. I’ll kill you, even if I’m going to jail,” at him.

The attacker, who had originally fled Syria in 2015 hoping to come to the UK, had been living in Germany after being arrested at Stuttgart airport for trying to travel on a false ID.

Prosecutors argued that he was a religious fanatic whose vicious attack was so brutal because his victim belonged to the Druze community, an ethnoreligious group often persecuted by mainstream Syrians.

Weeping on the stand, the victim said that he feared for his life, saying: “When I am standing in the shower in the morning, I feel that he is behind me.”